The invention concerns a method for need-based requisitioning or commissioning of medication or medicament portions in dispensing packs.
Medications or medicaments are given out to patients, medical personnel, or nurses or to their caregivers in basically two different types of packaging. On the one hand, there are medication or medicament packs that are usually given out by pharmacists and which each contain a plurality of identical medication or medicament portions such as, for example, blisters containing several tablets, capsules, or suppositories. Here the patient or his caregiver is himself responsible for the correct removal and dosing of the individual medication portions from the medication packs. As a rule, he receives tips for this from a pharmacist. A second form of dispensing medications is called a “dispensing pack” here. The dispensing pack contains several reception chambers, into each of which one or several medication portions are filled, to each reception chamber of which is assigned a characterization, for example the administration times (date, day of the week, time of day). Each reception chamber can contain several different medication portions. But it is also conceivable that exactly one chamber is provided for each individual medication portion, whereby, for example, several chambers are assigned to the same administration time. Moreover, the medication portions can also be divided up in the chambers so that each chamber contains only identical medication portions. The medication portions themselves contained in the chambers can also still be wrapped with separate packaging. Such dispensing packs have, for example, the form of blisters, in which the individual chambers are formed between two foils connected to one another (for instance hot-sealed). But the dispensing packs can also be constructed in an arrangement of cartons or little boxes connected to one another.
Such dispensing packs are currently frequently filled manually, in which a practitioner (for instance the personnel in a pharmacy, a hospital, or a nursing home) first transports to a workplace a series of conventional medication packs which each contain several blister packs, there prepares the empty packs to be filled for the dispensing packs with several reception chambers each, and then removes from the individual medication packs the necessary number of medication portions respectively and fills in the correct respective reception chambers of the dispensing packs to be filled. The individual medication portions are, for example, squeezed out of conventional blister packs, several of which are each contained in a conventional medication pack, whereby they then fall directly into the appropriate reception chamber of the dispensing pack. Then the partly emptied blister packs are packed back into the conventional medication packs. The partially filled blister packs containing the medication packs are then laid at a storage site for later removal of further medication portions. The dispensing pack filled with the medication portions can then be closed up. Errors can occur in this manual production process for dispensing packs. For example, individual medication portions can be filled into the wrong chamber, or the case may occur that too great a number of medication portions is removed from the medication pack and the excess medication portions subsequently inadvertently not put back into this medication pack but into another one; likewise if the medication pack being prepared at the workplace is filled back up with another type of medication.
One solution to this problem could be in the automation of the overall process. For example, there are automated dispensing devices, in which the medication portions that are to be filled into the dispensing packs are made available in advance in special cases, in which the cases are filled with a large number of medication portions put in loosely and are made available by means of a specially integrated dispensing arrangement for dispensing individual medication portions. The dispensing device can include several case receivers, which can each receive one case with a predetermined type of medication portion. The dispensing device can further include a trigger arrangement which can activate the dispensing arrangement of a case containing a case receiver such that medication portions are issued in a predetermined number from the case. The dispensing device then transports the removed medication portion into the correct reception chamber of the dispensing pack and for its closure. According to patent specification DE 10 2005 063 197 84, such a dispensing device can, for instance, be combined with a medication-storage machine, whose dispensing device provides for storing the case, its transport to the case receiver of the dispensing device, and its transfer. The medication-storage machine used for a dispensing device is, for example, of a type such as is described in the patent specification DE 195 09 951 C2. These known dispensing devices have the drawback that they require special cases with an integrated dispensing arrangement in which the medication portions are loosely laid. Use of conventional medication packs which contain several blister packs, for instance, is not possible for dispensing medication portions to be filled from dispensing packs.